"Why are you so awfully anxious to stand up for Mr. Brinsley? You're not in love with him, are you?"
Cordelia started very perceptibly, and turned her face away. Then, all at once, she laughed a little hysterically.
"In love? At my age?"
And she laughed again, and laughed, strange to say, till she cried, clinging all the time to the young girl's strong arm. Fanny did not ask any more questions as they walked slowly back to the house.
CHAPTER VII.
"Come with me into the village, and help me to do errands," said Fanny on the following morning, just as Lawrence was feeling for his pipe in his pocket after breakfast. "You can smoke till we get there. It wouldn't hurt you to smoke less, anyway."
They went down through the garden, fresh and dewy still from the short, cool night, towards the sea. The path to the village lies along a low sea-wall, just high enough and strong enough to keep the tide from the lawns. But the tide was beginning to run out at that hour, and was singing and rocking itself away from the shore, leaving the big loose stones and the chocolate-coloured rocks all wet and shining in the morning sun. The breeze was springing up in the offing and would reach the land before long, kissing each island as it passed softly by, and gently breaking with dark blue the smoothly undulating water.
The sun was almost behind the pair as they walked along the sands, and shone full upon the harbour as it came into view, lighting up the deep green of the islands between which passes the channel, and bringing up the warm brown of the soil through thick weaving spruces. The graceful yachts caught the sunshine, too, their hulls gleaming darkly, or dazzlingly white, their slender masts pencilled in light, against the trees, and standing out like threaded needles when they showed against the pale, clear sky. In the bright northern air, the artist would have complained that there was no atmosphere—no 'depth,' nor 'distance,' but only the distinct farness of the objects a long way off—nothing at all like 'atmospheric perspective.'
"Isn't it a glorious day!" exclaimed Fanny, looking seaward at a white-sailed fishing-schooner, which scarcely moved in the morning air.